Places To Explore
Heading from Venice, Marco Polo travelled across a well-trodden route
Marco Polo’s Silk Road
1 National Museum of iraq Baghdad
Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, led the Mongol’s brutal siege of Baghdad in 1258, massacring and raping its people while destroying and looting some of its most precious buildings including mosques, palaces, hospitals and the Grand Library.
Little wonder, then, that Marco Polo is said to have skirted the city as he headed East around 1272. It certainly remained a dangerous place and Polo would write of the unfortunate end suffered by a Muslim caliph who had converted to Christianity after supposedly seeing a man move a mountain. In his travelogue, Il Milion, he claimed the man had starved to death. Historians, however, believe he was rolled in a rug and had horses ridden over him.
Unfortunately, Baghdad remains just as precarious a city today, but there is so much to see. The medieval school complex, Mustansiriya Madrasah, remains standing from that era and is part of Al-mustansiriya. You can also visit the National Museum of Iraq that, despite a large amout of looting following the Battle of Baghdad in, contains numerous priceless artefacts.
Indeed, conservators have repaired damage to the museum’s unique collection and restored its galleries. With 13,000 archeological sites in Iraq, the number of items displayed there will surely grow.
The National Museum of Iraq reopened in 2015 and it can be visited between 8am and 2.30pm daily except Fridays.
2 Balkh’s ruins Balkh
Although Marco Polo described Balkh as a “noble city and a great seat of learning”, by the time he arrived at Balkh, Genghis Khan had already wreaked his destruction. His 100,000-strong army of horsemen had destroyed the city and its inhabitants in 1220, leaving a popular part of the major Silk Road routes in ruins.
Balkh’s capture by the Turkomongol ruler Timur saw it rebuilt in the early 15th century and this led to the restoration of its walls and new, grand buildings being erected. It was eventually neglected in favour of the nearby town of Mazar-i-sharif in the mid-19th century due to an absence of a drainage system and rising disease, but that doesn’t mean Balkh isn’t worth visiting.
Indeed, some of those age-old structures remain and a wander around the ruins of Balkh as well as the city itself offers a great glimpse of the past – so long as the instability of Afghanistan doesn’t put you off. The Balkh Museum – which has suffered looting – also contains historic relics of Islam and should be considered.
There’s no charge to visit the ruins and you can visit daily.